KARMA- What does it mean?

Most of the people today have heard of the term Karma, but the majority are not really sure about what does it exactly mean. Many people associate it with it’s popular usage in social media with the phrase “Karma is a b*tch”, which is used to signify that you are going to face negative consequences for all your bad actions. This makes people feel Karma is a negative thing, which is far from the truth.

What is Karma?

Karma is a sanskrit word which literally translates to Action or Work. It also represents your duties, for example for a teacher Karma means teaching students and for a doctor it means treating the patients.

Karma finds mention in several Vedic texts, the most prominent being Bhagwat Gita. The principles of life described in Bhagwat Gita require a separate dedicated post, but for now I will say that it revolves around two central characters Krishna and Arjun. Arjun is a warrior in deep dilemma about whether he should engage in battle with his friends and relatives in the opposing army. Krishna is an incarnation of Lord Vishnu (Hindu deity) who is playing the role of Arjun’s charioteer in this battle.

The core concept emphasised in Bhagwat Gita is that Karma needs to be performed as a selfless service to the Almighty God without any selfish intentions of receiving any rewards at the end.

Good Vs Bad Karma

The Vedas (ancient Hindu texts) mention that every action that we undertake is considered Karma and the impact it has on our external environment classifies it as Positive or Negative Karma. While a good deed like giving you spare change to a homeless person or helping a old lady classifies as Good Karma, acts like stealing credit for work done by your juniors at work or passing the blame for a missed project deadline on a colleague definitely qualifies as a negative Karma.

Vedas mention that our soul carries something like a bank account linked to our Karmas with the good deeds counting as a credit and the bad deeds serving as a debit. The soul undergoes cycle of rebirths until all bad debts have been paid off and then we are eligible to attain freedom from this cycle which is called Moksha or Nirvana. If we are born in this world it signifies we have some debts pending from our cycle of past lives. If we pay them off with good deeds in this life we move closer towards Nirvana, on the other hand bad deeds push us deeper into this cycle. Some people appear to be really lucky in all aspects of live, whether it’s being born in to a prosperous family, getting a good education, having a fulfilling job, getting an understanding spouse, finding money inside an old pair of jeans etc. These strokes of luck are supposed to be consequences of good deeds performed in our previous lives. Similarly some people seem to have rotten luck all the time like having a micro managing boss or a suspicious spouse these are said to be consequences of bad deeds in past life.

What about Free Will?

You may ask that if everything we experience in this life is decided by our past deeds how does our Free Will matter. It does cause what is in store in the future during current and next life are decided by your reaction to the situations you face in this life. For example if you are given a terrible husband in this life whose only enjoyment in life seems to be picking up fights with you even for the most trivial things like who will put out the garbage, then you may decide to show him that you can make his life worse and don’t miss out on any opportunity to give him a piece of your mind ignoring the plight of your hapless children stuck in between. This will be considered as Cumulative negative Karma which will haunt you for lives to come. On the other hand if you decide to be patient and try to understand your partner with the objective of having peace for you, your partner and the children and your social circle which impacted indirectly. In this case you will be rewarded with positive Karma. Of course this is a generic example and I am not saying there exist husbands or wives to deal with whom the police needs to be called immediately.

What’s my Belief

I personally feel that accounting of your Karma is not so simple and straightforward as checking the balance on your savings account with the bank. However I strongly believe that there is no worse crime than being a jerk to people around you who are not harming or obstructing you in any way. Suppose you decide to cheat 10 families of their money which was supposed to feed them for rest of the month, only because you badly wanted to buy the latest Ferrari model, in this case you don’t need to understand Karma just common sense should suffice to know that something like this could not be good for you.

If you focus everyday not to harm anyone for selfish gains it means you are staying clear from negative Karma, to top it up if you keep helping people less fortunate than you every now and then it means you are on the right track to get that elusive ticket to Nirvana.

All the best!